Joxer's Responsibilities
by crinklescofftrip
Summary: Sometimes Joxer had a hard time seeing how his life had changed since Xena and Gabrielle disappeared, at others its hard to see anything but. A warrior had certain responsibilities to his comrades. So did friends, and so did men. Rated T for some graphic descriptions, but nothing citrus.
The world was all about presentation. Joxer always tried to keep that idea fixed in his mind. It was possibly the most important lesson that he ever took away from the tutors he shared with his brothers growing up. He had slowed down countless lessons by calling attention to things he didn't get right away, dragging Jett and Jace's progress down to a standstill while a lesson was re-explained again and again for his benefit, and, time and again, seeing the frustration that he caused turn to pity or disgust. It was so much easier to just pretend he understood from the start and spare everyone else the delay, not to mention himself a tussling afterward. He could fake it until he figured it out, usually. In the present, Joxer had a fair number of things that he was truly good at, which he kept track of by way of a running list in his head so they wouldn't get mixed up with the things he only managed to _look_ good at. As a warrior, it was important to know your strengths—he had learned _that_ from Xena. He knew that following her and Gabrielle to the brink of Tartarus and back had sifted out his good traits from the bad in ways the irritable old warriors his father had brought in to teach him never could. He had already known that he could run, and take a hit with the best of them, stage the shrewd buyer at the armorer's stall, and phrase a plan so cunningly that no one could possibly know he had no idea how to position troops for a military campaign at all, but it was with Xena and Gabrielle that Joxer learned he could be reliable. It was from them that he truly learned the importance of following orders. And that he could be kind, and through that be strong. It was through them that he learned he could be brave, even if it wasn't in the blood thirsty way that his dad had demonstrated all his life.

In a lot of ways, being with Xena and Gabrielle had shaped Joxer into the man he was today, still not truly quite the topnotch warrior he presented himself to be, still living behind the convincing, fictitious mask he'd expertly worn since adolescence, but somehow more of a warrior than he ever could have expected all the same. The kind of warrior that would make Xena and Gabrielle proud to see trailing in their wake when he finally caught up with them again…wherever they'd been taken.

Joxer was just able to keep his bearings as he stumbled squarely into the outreaching arm of a hitch post where visitors to the nearby marketplace and taverns tied up their horses. Out of consideration for passerbys in this nicer part of the town, he was just able to swallow a bellow of choice words as a worn metal ring meant for looping harness through to hold them to the post managed to jab cleanly through a gap in the padding of his armor that he had been meaning to fix for months. It was a close one though.

He also managed to hold onto his armload of hay. Joxer started to congratulate himself as he looked around, grinning as if nothing embarrassing had happened to him at all—then his good natured grin evaporated, as he backed away from the hitching post under the surveillance of absolutely no one that he could see. Stepping back onto the foot-beaten pathway, Joxer quietly continued onward.

It was just as well, he supposed. No one seemed to particularly take notice of him now, which equaled out to it being easier to edit out his blunders from his overall presentation when people _did_ look his way. He could even swear they were happening less frequently.

Horses whinnied nervously as Joxer flung open the stable door with his shoulder. It was a good, well maintained structure with a high ceiling and walls made from snuggly fitted planks of wood, guaranteed to keep the elements out no matter what the gods threw at them in the height of winter. The late afternoon sun streamed in through a series of windows situated high up toward the roof, their shutters flung open to alleviate the normal smells that made stables in the less affluent part of town such a pain to set foot in. Joxer had done his research on this place, and he knew that twice a day each horse was checked up on, each stall was mucked out, by people who truly _knew_ about horses.

Joxer came to the last stall in the aisle of content looking horses, all equally uninterested in him now in the dismissive way that only a drowsy, well fed 1,000 pound beats could muster. He began to shift around his massive block of hay as he went about fumbling with the handle to get the door open. Inside, he could hear Argo let out a loud whinny that was all her own, and scrape the floor with her hoof.

Joxer found her standing in the corner closest to her private window, her ears not pointing _straight_ up, but not exactly flat either. Her stomach looked like a great golden wine cask had been fitted all around her midsection, dwarfing her usually elegantly long legs and making her look both adorably pudgy and extremely uncomfortable at the same time.

Annoyed and as scared, just as Xena had been in her condition…

How long ago had that been?

Joxer fixed a smile on his face, as personable as if she'd been a human, as he went to the feed bin and dissembled his burden into it. All the while watching her as she watched him, in case she decided to send a kick to his side of the stall for invading her personal space, like the time before. Just like with Xena.

Joxer stepped deferringly aside when he finished dumping the hay, and backed to the door of the stall. Meanwhile Argo let out a deep rumble of a neigh and ambled forward, going directly for the feed bin.

"Yessir, Argo, there's some of the top quality feed in town. Only the best for you and the little guy, girl."

Joxer continued to keep his smile in place as Argo began eating in earnest from what he'd provided for her. Feed came along with the stables, of course, but Joxer was sure it was the cheap stuff from the way that Argo hardly picked at it. He wanted to reach out to stroke her neck or her back, but he already knew that Argo was too temperamental in her current state to humor him.

As his eyes drifted over to the swollen shiny udder below Argo's belly, already full of milk for her unborn colt, Joxer's smile began to waver. The owner of the stables had told him that that was normal for a mare close to delivery. "Any day now, you'll be moving around like normal, Argo, and you'll also have the little guy, and I'm sure he'll be…normal too…"

Argo's nuzzle thumped the inside of the feed bin repeatedly as she ate. It did a good job of filling the silence after Joxer trailed off. He wondered if the old horse was thinking about Xena too. Whether her absence was the only thing that Argo could think about at big life events like this—just like he thought of her, and Gabrielle, swallowed up into the big unknown without a trace…

It had to have been more than a few years now at least, since Xena's pregnancy, but who was counting?

Joxer sniffed loudly to himself, wiped his nose to get rid of a phantom itch, and then said to Argo's unmoved head, "Gods, there's a lot of dust in here... Okay, girl. I'll be back to check up on you later. You just keep taking it easy until then."

He got up then, and quietly made his way out of the cozy little stall he had rented for Argo to have her foal in, listening to her to the sounds of her eating as he walked back to the door in the still air. A little blond haired boy was making his rounds along the far wall, closing each window one by one with a large wooden pole. He didn't stop to notice Joxer as he scurried along from one spot to the next, going industriously about his work, other than to glance his way as he opened the door and slipped out.

Joxer guess that he would be back at the stablesin only an hour or two. Any longer than that, and he would start to worry about the old horse's peace of mind. Argo had barely let the man who oversaw the stables close enough to examine her when Joxer first rented the stall, but the diagnosis had been the obvious: Argo's time was soon. The stable master had sternly advised him not to leave her alone for very long if he could help it. And so he wouldn't. Joxer just needed a breather, and Argo certainly didn't need him moping over her while she tried to eat, that was for sure...

If Joxer stepped out of himself, he knew that he was being silly, fussing over Xena's horse like he was. He would have chuckled seeing Xena act the way he was if she were here. But, Xena wasn't here to do any fussing. He couldn't imagine how confusing that must be for the old horse. Joxer supposed that was why Argo had gone looking for him when she found herself in a delicate way. Xena had always _said_ that Argo was an intelligent animal. It had only been a scant week since Argo came ambling onto the road in front of him, completely out of the blue. He hadn't seen her in months, and with the way that the two use to come and go into each other's lives, he couldn't help but wonder if maybe Argo had spent the majority of her pregnancy wandering Greece, looking for Xena to take care of her… Joxer guessed that he must have been the most likely person to pop into Argo's head when she realized she would have to settle for a substitute.

And he was happy to help, anything for an old comrade. Always.

Joxer's feet took him down the road and up the hill, taking him farther from the nice part of town and deeper into the streets he was more familiar with. He didn't like to go too far from the stables, but when he mapped out how to make his coins accommodate Argo's needs, he had to make some concessions for the sake of priority.

A tavern came into view as Joxer walked down the other side of the hill. There were more buildings in this neighborhood, but on the whole they were smaller and built closer together. The clouds already gathered overhead seemed to wash the streets with a dreary gray that did the little houses no favors in the rapidly falling dusk. The golden light beaming from the tavern's windows was the only thing that seemed to pierce it. People were already filling up the tables inside.

 _Sometimes,_ Joxer had a hard time putting his finger on exactly how much about his life had changed since seeing Xena and Gabrielle disappear in a flash of unforeseen godly grief. He hadn't always travelled with them in the time before. A lot of the time, he'd travelled alone. How on earth could they have managed to keep up with each other otherwise, when you had all of them together? Three red-blooded warriors as unstoppable as they'd been? It just wouldn't have been fair to the rest of the world, really…

He had to turn his face away from the windows as he walked around the building. He could see a girl with long blonde hair siting at a table with her back facing out toward the street, and in the lying, miniscule moment of a passing glance, he could almost imagine that she would turn around with a face he still knew so well in his memories, her expression that look of surprised welcome he'd get when he came upon Xena and Gabrielle on a good day, or the disbelieving frustrated one that usually meant he'd stumbled into the middle of something _good._ But he knew that wasn't Gabrielle in the window. Even if she was alive, she wouldn't grow her hair out that long again—he just missed her with it, almost as much as he missed her without it. The most that he would find if he went into that tavern would be some scattered barroom talk of The Warrior Princess and the Battling Bard, already fading into legend.

More often than not, getting involved in those conversations didn't end well for Joxer. Sometimes he got information from them that he could use, but more frequently now, he found himself bravely taking knocks so not overwhelm overzealous youths convinced that if Xena had been real, taking out a former, formidable comrade of hers would be a sure fire way to jumpstart a reputation.

Around back, the tavern boasted a small courtyard. Immediately adjacent to the building was a storage shack and a relatively well kept herb garden that belonged to the tavern keeper's wife, who also doubled as their main cook. And then, nestled in the far corner, shaded by the shadows of neighboring establishments and only marginally close to the tavern's outhouse, stood a little cottage. Joxer used the word cottage liberally, just as he had heard it used when he first visited a little over a year ago. On the inside, the shack had little more than a sitting room, a closet with a bed in it, and the tiniest hearth that Joxer had ever seen. In the past, Joxer had been told, it had been used to house the tavern keeper's mother in-law.

It wasn't much, especially compared to where he'd come calling in the past, but, as Meg said, it was the start of something better.

Joxer went to the door and knocked, then waited patiently as he listened to the commotion it sparked inside.

"Coming!'

A pause…

"Hang on!"

A warrior had certain responsibilities to his comrades. So did friends. And so did men, too.

 _"Hold it,_ mister!"

The door opened after a short interval of scampering feet and a bubbling giggle, and a little face much lower than the average passerby would have expected looked out at Joxer from the doorway. A smile broke over his face, as refreshing as a warm breeze in the middle of winter, and Joxer crouched down to be closer.

"Heya, kiddo."

"Daddy!" Joxer barely had time to open his arms before his son flew into them, the tiny hands snapping together around his neck as snuggly as the collar of any breast plate, and, for a moment, Joxer felt just as fortified as if it were the latter.

Footsteps were still audibly brushing against the floor though.

 _"Virgil,_ what'd I tell you about answering the door by yourself?"

The little vice around Joxer's neck went slack as Virgil, his miracle child who supposedly never should have come into existence, pulled back and looked over his shoulder, just as Meg came waddling into view, apparently much slower on her feet than their toddler son. Though that was understandable. When Virgil glanced back up at Joxer, he made a playful "uh-O" face that earned him a small giggle.

Meg was frowning when her eyes first shot out to the strange man holding her child in the doorway—an automatic reaction she'd developed from dealing with past _business_ acquaintances from her old life since going straight. Joxer saw it melt away the moment she recognized him.

He didn't see Meg as often as he should. Joxer knew that every time he came to visit her. The thought screamed itself at him even when she didn't, and that made it all the worse. There were so many things in his life that _had_ changed since Xena and Gabrielle disappeared. Things that had changed that he hadn't w _anted_ to. For all that, it made the things that stayed the same, even though they probably ought to have changed, stand out all the more. In the back most quadrant of his mind, buried under the thickest layer of presentation that he could muster, Joxer would never understand the way Meg looked at him, when they first met, when she first laid his first born son in his arms, or now, when she was standing on the brink of their second. Looking more than a little warn around the edges herself.

Meg settled her weight back onto her heels as best as Joxer imagined she was able to do in her current condition, and bestowed a smile on him that rapidly grew as he set Virgil away from him and scrambled to his feet.

"When in Dionysus's name did you get back into town, Jox? I almost didn't expect to see you around again until spring!"

More gently than with Virgil, Joxer briefly put his arms around Meg and squeezed her to him in greeting, her stomach a solid lump he didn't want to disturb as he looked around the room for the stool he remembered her having in this shack the last time he visited. Into her hair, he said, "Well, you know how my excursions go…"

Her grip on him was less cautious. "No, I don't! Does this mean nothing came from that Xena rumor in Corinth?"

"…No, Corinth was a dead end." Joxer spotted the stool in one corner, piled high with household odds and ends. He hastily let go of Meg and went to sweep it clear of the clutter. "You should really be sitting down. You must be exhausted—"

"From being as big as a whale?" Meg chuckled as she cut him off, but it did nothing to pacify the feeling gnawing at the pit of Joxer's stomach. There were bags under her eyes, despite the way she lit up when she saw him, and the hand that accepted Joxer's as he ushered her over was rougher from menial kitchen labor that she had never had to do to excess in the days before.

"You know you don't have to fuss over me like that, Joxer," Meg told him reassuringly, even while she let him settle her. She patted her enlarged stomach. "This isn't so bad the second time around. If I could just keep up with Virgil, there'd be no set backs to this at all."

"You shouldn't have to be keeping up with anyone," Joxer said. He looked around the room for a place to set down his armload of clutter—mostly kitchen things and spare blankets, all appearing to be clean aside from a bit of accumulated dust. Finding nowhere, he settled for scooting them into the corner near the hearth. "Now, try to relax… Can I get you anything?"

Meg didn't seem to hear him when he got up and turned back around. Virgil had wandered over to her and was playing with them hem of her skirt, while she looked down, either at him or at her belly, a fond inward expression on her face. Her hand slid idly over her middle.

"Well, here's a thought I've been thinkin' over," she said after a moment. "The boss's wife offered to let me take a few weeks off until the baby comes, and even watch Virg until everything's settled. But I can't ask her to do all that, with how hard she works already. She and the boss have been real kind to me in all this."

Joxer bit back an impulse to argue that of course she can when it was her only option. But he didn't want to do it and underline what options she didn't have because of him, so he just grabbed a blanket off the pile he'd put on the floor and went to lay over her legs.

She smiled up at him as he came close, Virgil scampering quietly out of the way. "I can't believe how active this one is. The midwife says the second one is usually mellower than the first."

"Well, Virgil's always been a good boy. . ."

Virgil was at that moment tracing shapes on the earthen floor with his finger. Joxer noticed that his nails were uneven. Meg probably couldn't manage to keep him on her lap to cut them with her current shape, like his mother always use to do with him when he was small.

That was a long time ago, a voice whispered from the back of Joxer's mind. Even so, he knew that if he were to look at his own hands right then, the nails would be perfectly smooth. He knelt down on the floor across from Virgil, watching him create one swirling shape after another with the tip of one chubby pink finger.

He was wondering how much more difficult it would be cutting his son's nails with his boot knife than it was to cut his own, when Meg continued her idle musings, "I'm so glad to have you here for this one, Jox. I was thinking that if it turns out to be a girl like the midwife says, we could name her after someone from your family, maybe. What do ya think?"

"Here for what?"

The laughter that Joxer heard as he looked up from where he'd knelt across from Virgil sounded a little thickly laid on for what it was. One of Meg's hands was still gently stroking her stomach, the other clutched the edge of her blanket. "Silly. For the _birth,_ the baby could be here any time now."

"Oh."

Their eyes met. Meg smiled again.

"Uh, when is that supposed to be exactly?"

"I don't know. The midwife says it could be any day now. That's why the boss's wife wants to help out for so long, in case the baby's late."

A silence cropped up as Joxer mulled over his options for what to say. Meg's smile began to whither. Before she got up, she flashed him a dull-eyed glance that made Joxer feel as if egg shells were springing up on the floor. She crossed the room, to the door that Joxer belatedly realized that he had left open, and gently closed it against the darkening evening. "You are staying with us for a little while this time, aren't you?"

"Honestly, it will…really d-depend on some things. I found Argo in the forest on my way here—"

Meg looked back at him. "Argo?"

He swallowed. "Xena's horse."

"You found her then!"

"No. No, I didn't."

Another silence, both Joxer and Meg looked down, neither, he was sure, wanting to delve into the depressing conversation about where they might be. It had already come up enough in the past.

Clearing his throat, he tried to continue, "I think Argo came to me because she needs help."

"Just on her own, a horse came looking for you?"

"Yes. Argo's pregnant…I think she knew she needed someone to take care of her until her colt came, so I… As a favor to Xena, I need to do the right thing by her…horse."

Joxer's face was burning as Meg tilted her head to the side. She was leaning back against the door was she looked him over with a pondering expression on her face that made Joxer think of a pot coming to boil, her stomach filling the space in front of her better than any elephant.

"So, you're in town to take care of Xena's horse?" she said.

"I was already on my way here when—"

"As soon as Argo's had her baby, are you planning to leave?"

"Now, Argo might need a few days to recuperate after—"

Her lips thinned, she spoke slowly and with deliberate effort. _"And then,_ you'll be free to go too, is what you're saying?"

"No… Not right away…" Meg looked at him again, opaque in her expression, and Joxer winced as he said the words, "There was a rumored siting in Sicily."

"I see. Another Warrior Princess lookalike that might be the real deal." Meg took a step away from the door as she spoke, her eyes falling down to something off to one side and decidedly near the floor, but Joxer never unclenched his muscles from before.

"Actually," he said, "It was a Gabrielle sighting."

A fire lit up in Meg's eyes when she snapped her head up with all the malice of a poisonous snake ready to strike. "I knew it!"

"Meg—"

"By all means, go off and save the world by finding the _sidekick_ of the greatest fighter who ever lived, and just leave me like—like…" Her hands jerked flailingly in front of her. "I betcha couldn't even say no to me if I said the only reason you came out this way was because it was convenient for your journey, could you?"

"That's not true at all, Meg. You know I wanted come by and check up on you—"

"Between goose chases, I know, Jox. It's very _considerate_ of you, all things considered."

Joxer's tongue became a piece of fuzz in his mouth. Little Virgil was still drawing on the floor in front of him, not looking at either of his parents, fingers pressing down harder into dirt than they had been a moment before, close enough that Joxer could put his arm around him if he reached out. He felt useless. There were times when Joxer's life seemed the same as the time before, and there were times when it was almost unendurably different. And there were times, when he would give anything to make the shifting between the two stop.

It was a moment before Meg spoke, murmuring just above a whisper, "So, how long do you have before Argo delivers then?'

"I don't know," Joxer said again. "It could be any day now."

Joxer heard a painful sounding grunt, that may have started as a sob, that brought his attention back up from the floor. When he looked up, Meg was jerking apart the latches on her door and throwing it open.

"Okay, then. You can get out _now."_

Joxer gaped at her. Meg turned her head to look back over her shoulder, but she didn't make eye contact. He wished he could say that he had words flashing through his mind, but not a single word came.

And then she whirled on him.

"Go on, get out! I can't keep waiting to beat out a memory for first place, and if you're not willing to prioritize me, you have no business staying here at this point."

"Are you saying—"

 _"I said get out!_ Get— _Ng_! Aaaargh! _"_ Meg staggered to the side while clasping her stomach with both herself back against the wall to the side of the door to keep herself upright.

Joxer stumbled to his feet instantly at the crack in Meg's voice. He saw Virgil's twirling fingers go still as he froze and looked up at them both, but when Joxer came near Meg fixed him with a poisonous glare and unlatched one hand from her midsection to point at the door. "Out, out, _out!"_

It was only after Joxer crossed the threshold that he heard Meg's last thought escape on a breathy grunt, "She never even loved you."

And then the door slammed shut. Joxer turned around to see Meg's silhouette make its way away from him through the narrow slivers of space in the world-weary wooden door. The cold settled over him, and it was not the least bit settled when Virgil was sent running out for the tavern keeper's wife just a few minutes later. When he knocked and called into her, Joxer was told in the kind of foul language the revealed Meg's upbringing, that he was not to be admitted.

 _~ K ~_

It was hard to tell when his feelings for Gabrielle had changed. That they had was a nearly undiscernible fact that Joxer felt more in his gut than anywhere else. He'd seen Meg adopt a harsh tone like the one she'd just used with him in the old days, handling a disgruntled patron or a mouthy girl in her brothel. Venom to cover anguish, and it gnawed at him all the more for knowing exactly how called for it was. His love for Gabrielle had reduced to something ghostly and frail, nearly gone most of the time, but inescapably present when it wasn't. Joxer couldn't bring himself to come back with any retorts to Meg, couldn't blame her for hers, because honestly…he didn't want to talk about it anymore. It was an old wound, a tempered cyst that would open on its own when the time was ripe, but otherwise could just be left _alone,_ as his memories of Xena and Gabrielle faded more and more into cold fantasy. Meg had to understand that, he didn't know where his journey would end. In the deepest corner of Joxer's being though, beyond the twain urges to stand by Meg and find Xena and Gabrielle, save them both from jaws of death or do the right thing by their remains, there was a nightmare awareness that the strings had already been cut. Wherever they were, they were already beyond anywhere he could follow. Out of his hands. Shades in the back of his mind.

But still, he didn't _know._

Joxer wished that he could say it was hard for him to keep looking, but somehow the rumors always managed to find their way to him—and he was always listening. In three short years, he had tracked down so many Xena look a likes that it made his heart sick to think of them. Twice, there had been plagiarists posing as the renown Battling Bard. Always, they'd been fakes, with no link to the originals whatsoever.

How his life now would be if they hadn't disappeared haunted him. Sometimes he wanted to give up the chase. He wasn't blind. He knew he was needed elsewhere. But for all that, Gabrielle's face still danced in his mind at night sometimes. Always been so bright before, now faded—turned dim around the edges until the whole thing was gray, and his feelings a weak ember in his chest. An aching memory, tied up tightly with the pain of losing his friends. Friends that it was left to him to find, somehow.

Joxer thought bleakly of the past few years as he took a deep swig of his ale. The search had only really started to go downhill when Octavius pulled his help. When Ares first took Xena and Gabrielle, they were sure the fight wasn't over. They'd gone to every temple in Ares' name, positive that they would be hidden there, either from the public or from the other gods. Even if they had been discovered in the plot, Ares had seemed to align himself in Xena's favor at the end… Then Octavius had sent Eve back to Rome for her own protection, as their search extended over the course of weeks, and then months. He argued Eve might still be in danger, and Joxer supposed that was the right thing to do, but he hadn't liked it. He had wanted to have Eve close by when they found Xena, so she could see that she was safe, so they could be reunited right away. Then Octavious had gone too.

"That was three years ago…"

"You say something, mister?"

Joxer jumped a little as he looked up. The barkeep, Meg's boss and landlord, was standing on the other side of the counter, watching him from the corner of his eye while wiping out the inside of a spare mug with a rag. Whether he knew who Joxer was or his relation to the woman who helped out in his kitchens, Joxer didn't know, but the possibility made him flustered. He shook his head with an awkward smile, and then hastily hide his face behind a second swig of ale.

The bar tender wasn't looking at him anymore when Joxer put down his glass. _Wouldn't do to cause trouble at Meg's work…_

From his stool near the backdoor, Joxer heard the rumble of approaching thunder outside and turned to look in the direction of the courtyard and Meg's little house. He hoped that Meg was okay now.

All at once, he realized that he hated her house. The ceiling leaked, the door was practically decrepit, and there was always a breeze blowing through it even in summer, siting in that dark, muddy corner of the tavern keeper's yard, where the sum never made it to the doorstep. A woman shouldn't be raising a child there, much less two. He should be in there with her now, even if she _was_ mad at him, and even if she didn't want him there. It was a man's place.

Thunder rumbled again, softer this time, but still close.

"So why aren't I there?"

Before the thought had even finished, Joxer clanged his mug against the counter and stood. The bar tender was on the other side of the room and didn't even look up, nor did Joxer stop to notice as he pushed away from the counter and started for the courtyard door.

It was colder and damper outside than it had been before. His face was pinpricked with a number of tiny droplets of water as he charged out for the cottage. He could just see the silhouettes of people moving on the other side of the pitiful shutters.

"Hey, mister! Are you the guy that owns the pretty horse up the road?"

Joxer stopped dead in his tracks, not five paces from Meg's door.

When he turned around, there was a boy with blond hair standing in the doorway of the tavern with one foot planted out in the mud. His face was ruddy and looked like he had been running, though he didn't sound at all breathless when he called out, "Horse has gone into labor, sir!"

Before Joxer could think, maybe before he could even breath, he was running back through the barroom, back onto the street, back up the hill and down the other side, all with the little boy following behind him. And as he ran, the boy chattered. Argo had gone into labor only a little while after Joxer had left her. The entire stable had heard her kicking up a storm in her stall to put the one brewing in the sky to shame, and it had had been all they could do to calm down the other horses. They sent someone to find him right away, but no one had known where he'd gone.

The rain picked up as they came to the bottom of the hill, causing small rivlets to run off the sides of Joxer's helmet.

The boy ran ahead to throw open the wide wooden doors when they arrived, panting. Joxer kept running until he reached Argo's stall. The innkeeper and his wife were already there, standing just inside with the door open wide. They greeted him, but Joxer didn't hear them over the onslaught on his other senses.

Nearly the entire floor of the stall was drenched in a fluid that Joxer didn't know and didn't _want_ to identify. So much of the hay that he had brought and what had come free with the stall was strewn about and ruined on the ground. A flickering amber-orange light came from a lantern held aloft by the inn keeper's wife to boost what was still able to come in through the uncovered window overhead, while the inn keeper himself was standing the furthest into the stall, his hands outstretched cautiously toward either side of him as he murmured something in the direction of where Argo was standing upright with her ears laid flat. One fore hoof was periodically stomping on the floor, which looked as if it had taken quite a scraping already.

"Thank goodness you're here, she won't let anyone 'round her," Joxer heard the inn keeper's wife say. He was rooted to the spot, staring at Argo until the horse spotted him and let out a loud, jarring whinny. The angle of her ears changed. Argo started toward him.

Expending so much energy remembering Xena really must have had an impact on Joxer's mind, because in the massive black marble eyes that look out at him from under the horse's golden mane, he almost thought he saw a plea.

Argo's coat was misted over with a sheen of sweat that reflected the light. Joxer felt it on his hand when he reached out and tentively touched her on the neck. Argo's big black eyes locked on him all the while, full of familiarity.

 _I'm the only friend she has._

"She ought to be laying down by now," the woman said, "she's been going on like this for too long."

"It isn't good for her chances," her husband added.

Joxer shook himself from his projections and looked from Argo to the other people in the room. Argo let out another whinny, softer than before.

Joxer couldn't think of what to say. He didn't need them to tell him something was wrong, he could already read that from Argo, but... "What…exactly is wrong?"

"She's old to be having a foal—there's that to start with—but from what I can see when I look at this mare, she didn't have the care a horse going to foal at her age ought to have had since the beginning."

Joxer looked nervously between the innkeeper and his wife. Outside another round of thunder sounded ominously. The storm could have been just outside the stable doors for all he knew.

"…What you mean?'

"He means that the baby isn't coming out like it should. At least she's calmed down a bit since you've come back to her, but she isn't going to have an easy time of delivery at this rate. Is she your horse?"

"No, I-I'm just taking care of her for a friend—"

"Well, it's too bad your friend isn't her to tend her," the man cut Joxer off mid-word, then had the mind to look abashed after a glance from his wife. Most likely, she'd seen the way Joxer paled when he walked in. She was watching him closely.

The man shuffled his feet and put a hand through his sparse hair. When he looked at Joxer again, his tone was gentler.

"She's an old horse," he said simply. "Even if she was docile, there'd be cause to worry, but if you look back there you should see why things are worse than they could be."

Joxer looked between the man and his wife again, and then swallowed. It was with a deep seeded sense of trepidation that Joxer moved down the horse, petting Argo reassuringly all the way, even as he expected to he kicked in the face at any moment. Not so long ago, Argo only responded favorably to one person other than Xena coming anywhere near her hind quarters, and even near the end Gabrielle hadn't considered herself on truly friendly terms. Joxer didn't know if taking her in during her pregnancy would qualify him any better.

The opening through which the foal was due to come was obvious even to Joxer's ignorant eyes, damp and swollen as it was. But what made it unmistakable was that something protruded from it, shiny and wet, and dark red in color, and looking immensely uncomfortable all around.

"So you can see we need to do a lot very quickly," the innkeeper was saying from where he was still standing by the door of the stall, completely unhampered by the vertigo that threatened to take Joxer out.

Joxer could only look up at the man and ponder the fact that he fully expected Joxer to know exactly what the condition of Argo's neither regions meant.

"Of…of course! No time to lose. We should start by having Argo cool down. The best way to do that would be to, um…"

The old man and his wife exchanged another look.

"You don't know a lot about horses, do you, son?"

The admonishment landed so gently upon him, Joxer felt the urge to lie in the face of it rise almost instantly, along with a traitorous lump in the back of his throat. His lips pressed together as he shook his head hard enough to make his helmet shake.

The innkeeper sighed aloud, his wife rushed on.

"The foal's not breaking the way it should. The red sack you see there should have gone much earlier when the labor started coming to a head. Now that it's been so long…"

"What?'

"We got a lot to do, son," the inn keeper said. "We should start by getting her to lay down."

 _~ K ~_

There was nothing Joxer liked about Argo's labor. He didn't like the smell in the air. He didn't like the dampness, or the indescribable third element that thickened the air all around him as the inn keeper and his wife worked. Or tried to. The gods knew that Argo didn't make it easy.

"Try to keep her calm now…"

Xena would have been having a fit if she was here.

"We're making progress…"

Joxer thought that Gabrielle would have been out in the aisle among the stalls, too afflicted by nausea to come in. Or maybe she would have been so moved by Xena's distress that she would brave the atmosphere to stand by Argo's side with her. Or keep her from threatening violence to the experts attending her beloved horse.

He wasn't sure where he would be in that scenario. Maybe, he wouldn't even be here at all.

"Easy! Easy now, I can see the little one waiting to come out. Stay with us, you're looking too green!"

It had taken eons to get Argo to lay down on the floor of her stall. The only silver lining of her nerves had been that it gave them enough time to trade out some of the spoiled straw for clean, though even with the exhausted horse finally laying in front of him, Joxer didn't know how he managed to get her there. He had at least half a dozen memories of Xena saying her horse was special. Maybe he didn't need to speak horse to get through to her, maybe Argo somehow just knew how to speak _person._

The massive tawny head was drooping just a few inches from Joxer's raised hands. Now that she was down, any time he tried to touch her Argo went into alarm, but she still seemed to prefer that he be there. He didn't know what to do to help her through the delivery. He could picture Xena stroking Argo's neck, whispering to her in a way no one would expect from someone who once had such a bloody reputation.

Wind howled through the window that was still open in the far corner of the stall. The poor horse looked up at him from the mound of fresh straw that Joxer had assembled for her head, the best he could think to do for her. For Xena's horse, who had been her friend since before him, since before Gabrielle. The only other living thing that could possibly feel as utterly left behind in the current day as he felt himself.

"Brace yourself, here it comes!"

There was a clap of lightening somewhere outside that wasn't too far away. Joxer remembered that not many horses appreciated lightening. Once his dad had had to delay a war march on a neighboring lord for four days in the height of the stormy season over skittish horses and bad road conditions alone. But when Argo's neck suddenly whipped back and the whites of her eyes flashed in something akin to sheer terror, it was like gaining the knowledge for the first time, seeing the proud warrior princess's stead as just another mother in labor. A _scared_ mother.

And then Meg's face stabbed through his mind.

Argo's head came back down. The massive dark eyes were cycling from alarmed, to crazy, to simply tired. They slowly blinked, long and slow in a way that smacked of familiarity and made Joxer's heart stop in that same peculiar way from before. They fixed on Joxer's face and clouded over.

A fresh wave of liquid splashed onto the flood, blood and urine and a strange "other" fluid that Joxer had no association for other than to relate to birth.

"There, now," the innkeeper's voice floated over from Argo's other end. "There she is! Come on, let's open those eyes…"

"Pa, what about the mother?"

"In a moment, first let's make sure the filly's alright."

Joxer heard the words as they were uttered around him, but it was as if they were echoes in a cave. He continued to look at Argo. Her head was laying on the straw flecked through with hay, near his bended knees. He thought it might have been the hay that he had bought for her earlier that day, but he didn't know. He sat there for a long time, feeling the weight of burdens lost and added, strengths and weaknesses, his own and others.

Later the innkeeper's wife put her hand on his shoulder, jarring him back into himself.

"It would probably be best if you cleared out now, give the poor thing a chance to breathe. We'll take care of things from here. She…I just realized I haven't the faintest idea of her name."

"It's—it's Argo."

"Well, Argo's lucky to have you." The hand squeezed his shoulder, then patted it gently in a way that both announced and softened its meaning. Joxer was still a customer, but it was time for him to go. The inn keeper's wife gave him a smile along with the gesture. It hit him like an ice brink when she finally let him go. "You're going to be a good father someday, young man, the way you care about that horse."

 _~ K ~_

It was dark everywhere when Joxer stepped over the threshold, but for the open doorway that led to the one tiny little bedroom where too many people were gathered already. The wind outside was still raging, although the brunt of the rain had spent itself during his walk over the hill. Which he was glad for; even if he was wet himself, there were too many holes in Meg's roof to cope with this kind of weather.

Joxer made an effort to be quiet for whatever it was worth, but his armor clanked and jangled awkwardly on him as he padded over to the room. Virgil was the first to see him, crouched as he was near the doorway. His face brightened, and Joxer smiled at him, but he held a finger up to his lips to signal Virgil to stay quiet as if it were even possible for him to wedge himself into Meg's teeny tiny bedroom without being noticed.

Meg may actually have been the only one who _didn't_ hear him come in as it was, but she was distracted. The other two women there looked up at him instantly. The tavern keeper's wife made up half of them, and Joxer guessed that she must have known who he was because she didn't say anything as he shuffled toward the bed.

The smell here was less compact. The air shamingly less muggy for the walls that did so much less to protect against the elements than those of Argo's stall. As Virgil ran up to throw himself around his knees, Joxer found himself looking into Meg's face, distorted as it was with fatigue and strain. Back when they had first met, he had seen Xena when he looked at her. And then after the disappearance, he had seen a reminder heavier than he had ever wanted to admit. It had been a complicated way of looking at her. Now with her hair matted and the sweat on her skin reflecting the lamplight, he was finally able to remember that she was beautiful. His Meg, with her warm heart and steadfast acceptance of everything the world threw at her.

Ruffling Virgil's hair, Joxer set him away from him so he could kneel beside the bed. Only then did one of Meg's eyes crack open, as if the sound of his armor creaking against her floor had somehow been louder the rickety squeaking it made when maneuvering himself in. Almost immediately a scowl came onto her face. She might have said something if she had the chance, but within a moment her head was thrown back by a force that looked painful from the way she wreathed on the bed. Her hand clawed up a fistful of the bedclothes. Her eyes clamped shut, and if she tried to tell him to go to Tartarus, it didn't make it out around her pained gurgle.

About midway through, Joxer began to gently tug at the bedclothes to get them loose, but Meg's iron grip refused to let them go until she was ready.

The midwife for her part waited until Meg was able to answer before asking, with the vocal implication of one too busy to spare manners for a fool with questionable timing, "Who's this then?"

"The…lousy…good for noth…ing father!" Meg's eyes remained clenched shut.

Joxer waved awkwardly with his free hand.

"Should we get rid of him?" The tavern keeper's wife.

 _"No."_

Joxer tried to slowly ease his hand into the vacant spot leftover after he pulled free the blankets. Meg's instantly clamped around it so tightly he almost thought she'd break a bone. Meg still didn't look at him, though he thought that Meg's expression took on a particular add note of affected annoyance for his benefit.

Over Meg's legs, the midwife and the tavern woman shot Joxer their own look, neither particularly warm for a man so late coming to his own child's birth. Joxer felt his face heating, but he tried to smile through it while he squeezed back for Meg. His thumb rubbed an absent, nervous circle on the back of her hand when the pressure let up. After a moment, the midwife shook her head and went back to work, and the tavern matron stroked Meg's sweaty hair out of her face.

There would be time to tell her later, Joxer thought as he watched Meg brace herself for the next leg of the labor. He knew where his journey would end now.


End file.
